


Find Peace in the Light

by Helianthus21



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Episode: s02e06 A Light Supper, Gen, Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-18
Updated: 2020-08-18
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:22:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25973587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Helianthus21/pseuds/Helianthus21
Summary: Reginald humiliates Diego, and Ben can no longer just watch.
Relationships: Ben Hargreeves & Everyone
Comments: 12
Kudos: 130





	Find Peace in the Light

Reginald humiliates Diego, and Ben can no longer just watch.

“Klaus-” he says, but Klaus already makes a sweeping gesture with his hands before he can express his demand. 

“On it, baby,” he promises, and just like that, Ben is there. 

He has a body now, and he’ll use it to fucking punch the smugness off Reginald Hargreeves’ stupid face. He’s off his chair in a heartbeat ( _some_ heartbeat, not his obviously), and a few quick strides take him and his raised fist over to his intended target.

But with the reflexes of a bird of prey, Reginald catches his fist mid-air before it can hit him in the face, and Ben, caught-off guard, can do nothing but silently stare back at his dad’s scrutinizing gaze. It almost physically stings, that gaze. Even in his incorporeal state Ben feels the reverberations of anxiety and shame and that small rest of the little kid’s hope for a simple word of praise, or at least for something  _ not  _ disapproval, that clings to Ben still, after all these years.

This Reginald, who doesn't know them yet, who hasn’t raised them, holds of course no more affection than dear old dad Reggie. That is to say, less than none, for them.

The final line of judgment hits Ben like a ton of bricks.  


“Hesitation even under the pretence of brash impulsiveness. I don’t know if you trap yourself too deep in your own morality to be able to leap into action or if you’re simply too slow, young man.” His hand’s still raised. No longer to intercept Ben’s punch rather than to keep him right there like a cornered animal. One more appraising look travels over Ben’s half-transparent form, before Reginald cants his head in easy dismissal: “Yes, I can see now how it is you died.”

And Ben knows. 

Logically, he knows he doesn’t need air to live anymore seeing as he’s the very antithesis of life. 

It’s inexplicable how the breath’s still punched out of him.

Like Diego before him, he can do nothing but stare at Reginald in something like abject despair. Suddenly he’s seventeen again, choking on his own blood and spending his last coherent moments thinking that dad was right, that he was a failure. An  _ underachiever _ , how dad used to call it.

While Ben’s thrown back behind the bars of dad’s cold judgment, the old man’s already averted his attention, deeming Ben of no further interest. Ben sobs out a bitter laugh at the thought. Because he is, isn’t he? He’s powerless on his own now, and therefore his existence holds no value. In Reginald’s mind, at least.

Ben dares not look into his siblings’ eyes, afraid to see pity reflected back at him. 

He turns his back on them, returns to his seat a little offside the table where he belongs, and pulls the hood of his jacket over his head. This is not how he’d hoped to be seen by his siblings again, and he wishes Klaus made him invisible again already because he really needs to blend into the shadows right about now. 

Thankfully, this too, Klaus grants him with no words needed. 

*

“Team Zero, my ass,” Diego grumbles out, voice hollow from the kind of desolation only one man can evoke in them. 

“Guy sucks all the life out of family parties,” Ben comments dryly, going for sarcastic but probably landing more on the same hollowness as Diego.

Klaus graces him with the self-ironic giggles of the disillusioned and lifts the cocktail glass he nicked from the table. “And you should know!” 

Luther bends down slightly to get Klaus’ attention. “Is, uhm. Is Ben okay?”

“Hmmm,” Klaus makes, taking a stalling sip of his drink. “He’s dead, bro. Can’t get any better than that.”

“Cheers to that,” Ben agrees, and tips an imaginary glass of his own in Klaus’ direction.

“Aaand he’s back to being a sarcastic asshole, so,” Klaus shrugs lightly. “Yeah, he’s coping.”

“It’s not why you died, you know.” Diego doesn’t even turn around as he talks, just keeps staring at the dull gray elevator door which is just fine because he wouldn’t be able to find Ben’s eyes to look into anyway. “You’re not… any of what the old man said. If anything,  _ we _ failed you.” 

Ben can feel Klaus’ eyes darting towards him, and Vanya’s searching gaze flitting around the empty spaces of the elevator. He swallows. He wishes he could touch Diego, Vanya, anybody, but at the same time he’s not ready to face them again after the debacle at the Light Supper. 

“The only thing I regret is that that punch didn’t land.”

Klaus chuckles. Then, in a fit of theatrics, he places his hand flat on his chest. “Oh no, that’s so  _ touching _ . You don’t have to cry, Benji, the love of your siblings is enough to fill the hole the daddy issues left inside you.” 

Ben rolls his eyes. “Shut up.”

“I can’t hear him,” Allison says, shooting Klaus a teasing look. “But I’d bet a million bucks he just told you to fuck off.” 

Dragging a hand over his jaw, Klaus admits, “Touché.”

A quiet ripple of laughter and contained snorts resonates in the elevator.

And that’s the thing about Klaus, Ben thinks. Barely anyone notices when he does it, but he has a way of bringing a little bit of light back into a room full of darkness with impressively practiced ease. How it looks inside his own head, is another story altogether. Ben’s always wondered if that isn’t the most valuable part of his powers. The part that’s not all that extraordinary in the way Reginald Hargreeves defines it. The part that’s just Klaus. 

When the elevator doors open, Ben turns his head and his eyes meet Klaus’. “Tell him he’s not any of what dad said either,” he asks. “And,” he adds, “I never blamed you, you know. Not any of you.” 

A sudden softness casts Klaus’ face into an expression of vulnerability that he so rarely openly shows. But Ben, being around him so much, has seen it enough. He smiles at his brother, quiet and a little bit sad, and nods. 

As the last one next to Ben, Klaus leaves the elevator and runs after the others. “Hey, Diego, wait up!” 

Ben lingers a while longer, watching on as his siblings scatter and come back together. He waits, just until the elevator doors are about to close. Only then does he slip out into the fresh air, and with the night sky above him, the claustrophobic feeling that seemed to swallow him whole around Reginald subsides. Out here, he can breathe again, even if that’s just a figure of speech for him. 

It just figures that the one time he finally gets to stand up to his dad like he so often imagined during all these years, after it fully dawned on him just how much Reginald’s methods of child rearing messed them all up, it turns out like this. Rubbing him raw. He used to like imagining such a confrontation to bring the catharsis he always needed, but that too, as Reginald so eloquently put it, is a fantastic delusion.

Reginald won’t offer any catharsis because he doesn’t think he’s done anything wrong. The only way to ‘find peace in the light’ (and Ben can still only scoff in disgust at the thought of this stupid engraving) is through his siblings. Ben’s realizing this now more clearly than ever before.

Later.

Later, he’ll ask Klaus to make him visible again.

For now he’ll enjoy the peaceful solitude of darkness. 

**Author's Note:**

> This happened because I needed Klaus to let Ben punch Reggie in the face. Only then I imagined the scene, and it got angstier than I intended bc Reggie's an ass. Hope I got their voices right.


End file.
